The phenomenon of hysteresis in magnetic materials has been widely studied for many decades and several models have been proposed to find good approximations for this phenomenon. The simulation presented in this paper describes hysteresis in a cylindrical type II superconductor of small aspect ratio. A fundamental approach, using energy minimization, has been applied by which the demagnetization effects are naturally included. A comparison has been made between the critical current derived from the magnetization using Bean's formulation for the infinitely long cylinder and that for the short cylinder used in our calculations, and it indicates how the error in using the Bean model for a short cylinder can be minimized.